Inspired by classic tabacs, restaurateur Jon Neidich opened an already-buzzing boîte in NY’s most talked-about neighborhood.
recently: “In the ‘00s, New York exported the concept of ‘Brooklyn’ to the rest of the world; today, it exports Dimes Square.” Goodbye yogi craft brewers, hello “socialist” fuckboys on mystery drugs.Directly next door to the scruffy watering hole Clandestino and occupying the corner of Ludlow and Canal Streets, Le Dive is an airy, retro, indoor-outdoor bar with tables spilling onto the sidewalk, where one might smoke, sip a martini, and glance at Heidegger or Derrida.
In February, Neidich invited his team at Golden Age Hospitality on a trip abroad, partly as a thank-you for their work on The Nines, which opened in Noho this spring, and partly as a research trip for Le Dive. While there, the team visited two spaces for lunch and two spaces for dinner every day . At spots like L’ami Louis, Dauphin, La Buvette, Cave Septime and Mokonuts, the team would order everything on the menu and discuss elements such as lighting and ambiance.Photographed by Teddy Wolff.
“Picking out the right colors is such an important thing,” Neidich said. He’s been getting into old-school design books lately, and is currently trying to hunt down a vintage book of French colors. Though he first considered a green palette for Le Dive, burgundy is a classic for tabacs, which “genuinely have a warmth to them,” Neidich said. “They serve as congregating places for people to come at various times during the day.
He compares tabacs to dive bars. “It's a local meeting place,” he said. While explaining this idea over dinner a year ago, an English friend semi-ironically called it “le dive.” And natural wine could update the concept, he thought. Photographed by Teddy Wolff) developed the cocktail menu. “It’s a big exercise in trust for me, because I was always able to trust my palate,” he said. “This is the third menu I've had to do without tasting anything.
Fittingly, Dimes Square reminds Neidich of the 11th arrondissement of Paris, with “a lot of little restaurants” and “a neighborhood feel, more than any other neighborhood in New York right now,” he said. “There’s something kind of magical down here.” When he lived nearby over ten years ago, Neidich recalled, the area “was kind of special in that it was a little bit away from development.” Those days are gone.